Cycling in London

Twenty five years ago cycling in London was much like the the rest of the country, with very little provision of infrastructure that was actually useful for people trying to get about by bike. London always had more of an incentive not to drive given the traffic congestion problems, but it also has a far better public transport system than any other part of the UK too.

Following the implementation of the congestion charge in 2003 the reduction in the numbers of cars meant that conditions on the roads in central London became much more suitable for cycling. Boris Johnson was able to capitalise on the efforts of his predecessor to improve local transport on London by beginning the development of a network of genuinely good routes for cycling.

These days cycling in London is just a way of getting about, it’s not a statement about your social or political views, it’s just a cheap and quick way of getting about. Because cycling trips are door to door they can compete effectively with journeys by public transport that need a walk at either end of the bus or train ride. Also, if you are riding your own bike you don’t need to pay for a ticket.

With the reduction in cars there has also been an increase in the space available for people and there are frequent outdoor spaces. An additional benefit of the reduction in traffic is that central London is much quieter than most UK cities, which makes sitting outside a much more enjoyable experience. Secure on-street bike parking also helps to make cycling more convenient, especially for flats or small terraced houses, and Bike Hangars are a relatively common sight on residential areas.

Public Space Protection Orders

Whilst Lancashire County Council is busily consulting on another sustainable transport route, and how they can make cycling safer, Lancaster City Council are consulting on whether cycling in the city centre should be considered as anti-social behaviour.

It would apear that despite having declared a climate emergency one thing that absolutely cannot be tollerated in Lancaster is cheap and sustainable local transport. Several Local Authorities have already managed to use PSPOs to establish themselves as anti-cycling councils, with Grimsby doing very well at it. A very common theme amongst these councils is that they have doen nothing to make cycling any less dangerous on any of the possible alternative routes, and Lancaster certainly fits very well into that category.

We are especially concerned to see that the questions address behaviour whilst drinking, whilst the in relation to cycling the council are asking about a restriction on cycling, without any suggestion that the manner of cycling should be inconsiderate to be anti-social for a restriction to be desirable. We are concerned with the framing of cycling as an anti-social behaviour and that this would be a case of a PSPO not being used correctly: it is framed as a blanket ban on an individual’s choice of transport, rather than being focussed on anti-social behaviour.

The comments submitted can be found here.

Why do People Cycle on Pavements?

People complaining about other people riding bikes on pavements is not at all uncommon. However, thsi does need to be considered alongside the fact that people also frequently complain about people cyciling on roads. Apparently, one in three drivers think that cyclists should be banned from using public roads, although thats a considerably smaller proportion than the two thirds of adults in the UK who think that the roads are too dangerous to cycle on.

When people aren’t complaining about cyclists on the roads, or on the pavements they are usually either complaning about people riding bikes being too slow and holding up traffic, or for going too fast, or for riding two abreast, or not having any lights, or because they didn’t like the choice of clothing. Having considered all this the one thing that really is clear about cycling is that whatever you do people are definitely going to complain about it.

So, if you are going to be on the receiving end of a whole load of complaints anyway surely it’s better to feel safe. Ultimately it’s safety that is why peopel cycle on pavements, and the police have been recognising this for over a quarter of a century in the enforcement approach that they take towards pavement cycling.

Where there is a safe space for cycling you probably won’t see many people cycling on the pavements, but where there isn’t and the roads have either fast or heavy traffic then cycling on the pavement often becomes the only way of safely getting where you are going. There are only two places in Lancaster where you will find a separate protected cycle path by a road, and in both cases they are exceptionally short. These are outside Leisure Lakes bike shop on Penny Street, and by the bus gate on North Road. We are prepared to bet that you probably won’t see anybody cycling on the pavements in either of these two locations.

South Road did once have protected cycle lanes on it, although only for a very brief period before local politicians decided that although they support safe spaces for cycing they didn’t support these safe spaces for cycling and swiftly had the protectin removed in favour of some paint. It is hardly surprising that as soon as the protecte dcycle lane was removed and repelaced by paint the number s of peopel sysling on the pavaments increased considerably. Local Cycling UK members estimate that the change to a painted cycle lane resulted in about 10% of all cycle traffic on South Road switching from riding on the road to riding on the pavements.

Paint is not Protection

One of the difficult things about cycling in the UK is that, because of the complete lack of safe routes along main roads in most places, it is often obvious to people who want to try cycling that the routes they knwo are completely unsuitable.

People who have been cycling in the area for a long time will have found a variety of routes that work for them, sometimes making use of the poorly thought out snippets of cycling “infrastructure” and tortuous back roads. Although some of the main roads around Lancaster do have pained cycle lanes, this is only because councils insist in wasting money on them s that they can claim to have “done something for cyclists”. People who try using them often subsequently choose other routes because the painted cycle routes often feel less safe than nothing at all.

Indeed, there is evidence to support that they are more likely to result in cyclists being injured than doing nothing at all. Perhaps councils are still wasting the taxpayers money on painting cycle lanes when they have quite clearly been completely ineffective at either increasing levels of cycling or making cycling safer for the last 25 years precisely because they want to deter cycling.

Another possible reason why local politicians like painted cycle lanes so much is because in addition to being able to claim thatt they have “done something for cyclists” (which drivers should most certainly be resentful of), it does absolutely nothing at all to inconvenience drivers (whose views are usually considered to be at least ten times more important than those of anybody else as far as politicians are concerned). It also provides absolutley no benefit whatsoever to people riding bikes, infact it actually makes them more likely to end up in hospital).

Pedestrian Safety in Lancaster

Whilst Rishi Sunak and his friends complain about “Dangerous Cycling” others who are more concerned about the safety of pedestrians are campaigning for real change to make our streets safer for everybody.

Meanwhile in the real world it is now over a decade since the then Justice Secretary Chris Grayling MP announced the Government’s intention to launch “a full review of all driving offences and penalties”, stating that he “wanted to make our roads safer”. This review still hasn’t been undertaken a decade later.

A quick look at Crashmap reveals that the most dangerous places for pedestrians in central Lancaster tend to be in the vicinity of signal controlled pedestrian crossings on the one way system.

W understand from Lancashire County Council that the wait times at these crossings can be up to 45 seconds from someboddy pressing the begging button to people actually getting a signal that it is safe to cross if the roads are busy. There are a few crossings where the delays are 10 seconds shorter, but that can still be quite a long time to wait standing in the rain.

Of course these traffic lights are programmed to give a signal that it is safe for people to cross the road much more quickly if there isn’t any traffic coming, but this is of limited usefulness to most people who can see that the road is clear and cross without needing the lights to change. That tends to make these pedestrian crossing little more than a very expensive placebo, except for visually impaired people.

We have all see people in a hurry and not wanting to wait for the lights to change to stop the traffic take their chances to cross the road before the traffic has stopped. This rather common behavoiur could well explain quite a few of the pedestrian road casualties in central Lancaster, so why aren’t those people who claim to be concerned about the safety of pedestrians actually trying to make crossing the road easier for people who just want to get to the shops?

Councillors and council officers routinely complain that there is no money to make any improvements, but changes such as this don’t require any costly road works, just a bit of time reprogramming the traffic lights. So what’s stopping them?

Next time you go to Manchester have a think about how long you wait at a pedestrian crossing for the trafic to be signalled to stop.

Dangerous Cycling

An important part of the governments ongoing, and evidently futile, attempts to “End the War on the Motorist” has been to generate additional resentment for people just trying to get to school, work, or the shops by bicycle. One of the ways that they have done this has been by making a big issue about “Dangerous Cycling”. Whilst this won’t now be made law it will almost certainly made some drivers fell less need to drive considerately around people riding bikes on the roads.

Once again local politicians in Lancaster have been a step ahead of Rishi Sunak and were already raising concerns about dangerous pavement cycling almost a year ago.

According to Crashmap there have been 14 pedestrians injured by people riding bikes over the last 24 years in and around central Lancaster (the most recent year that data is available for is 2022). However, all of these injuries are reported as slight.

Something that we haven’t heard local politicians expressing any concern about is the 164 pedestrians that have been injured in and around central Lancaster over the same period by cars, including one fatality and 51 serious injuries. There have been a further three pedestrian fatalities caused by goods vehicles, and two by buses over that time too.

We also haven’t heard local politicians expressing concern about the 189 cyclist casualties, that include three fatalities and 52 serious injuries.

Whilst we aren’t trying to claim that pavement cycling might be a problem we are certainly not convinced that it is very often dangerous, and there certainly are much greater dangers to pedestrians than people riding bikes. Anybody raising concerns about dangerous cycling certainly isn’t trying to make people any safer.

We also think that it is important to point out that for a very long time there has been a national police policy on pavement cycling.

“The introduction of the fixed penalty is not aimed at responsible cyclists who sometimes feel obliged to use the pavement out of fear of the traffic, and who show consideration to other pavement users.

"Chief police officers, who are responsible for enforcement, acknowledge that many cyclists, particularly children and young people, are afraid to cycle on the road, sensitivity and careful use of police discretion is required."

We will be having a closer look at why people choose to cycle on pavements in the future.

What are the Alternatives to Bus Stop Bypasses

It’s always easy to criticise something, but it is usually much harder to suggest a better alternative. Perhaps this is why none of those who have been criticising and complaining about bus stop bypasses have suggested a better alternative as yet. Indeed, a very cycnical person might be inclined to think that those who are leading the criticism of bus stop bypasses are more interested in preventing people from having access to cheap and sustainable alternatives to driving for short local journeys than they are about the safety of bus passengers and pedestrians.

We have mentioned before the poor standard of provision for cycling in Lancaster, and that there probably isn’t a single inch of cycle route near a road that meets current guidelines. That doesn’t mean that Lancaster doesn’t have off-road cycling provision going past bus stops though, even though absolutely nobody is complaining about them.

So what it is that’s so much better about bus stops on shared use pavements than properly made cycle tracks that bypass bus stops? Certainly the three examples we found in Lancaster all have potential for conflict between people riding bikes and waiting for busses, or trying to get on and off them.

The only other alternative that we’ve seen, and is probably even more prevalent in Lancaster, is where there is a dashed pained line by the gutter that enables local politicians to claim “Look, we’ve done something for cyclists, aren’t we environmentally friendly.” However, if you look at how well this has worked out for Lancaster, with rapidly diminishing levels of cycling in the city centre it’s hard not to conclude that all this paint in the road only works as a deterrent to using a bike rather than a car for short local journeys.

Ultimately it’s a question of whether we want people to feel that they have more transport options to choose from or not. If virtually everybody has no option but to drive it only makes driving even more inconvenient for those that really need to.

Ending the War on Drivers

We’ve already commented that the Government are “Ending the War on Drivers”, and trying to do this by making cycling more unpopular, and probably also more dangerous. However, the more observant among you might have noticed that Rishi Sunak wasn’t even elected as an MP until five years after “Ending the War on Drivers” had begun. So who really is at war with drivers, and why are the government so utterly incapable of stopping it?

I’m a keen drivist myself, but I can’t avoid noticing that the long journeys I did in on old Mini (with the heater on all the time, even in the summer) thirty years ago haven’t actually got any quicker, despite thirty years of road improvements, faster cars, better navigation, and smarter motorways.

Between 2020 and 2025 National Highways are going to spend over £800 for every car on the roads saving a whopping 36 minutes for each of them. So the question is, it it really worth £22 a minute not to sit in your car? But don’t worry, you’ve already had 25 minutes of your £22 a minute time saving, so nobody can swindle you out of it.

So with driving more popular than ever, about 10% more cars on the roads than when the Conservative government started “Ending the War on Drivers”, and cars so much bigger than they were before, can it really be people riding bikes that are causing all the problems on our roads?

Answers on a postcard please to trouble@mill

Bus Stop Bypasses

It won’t have escaped your attention that as part of the attempts by the Prime Minister to “end the war on drivers” he has been increasing his war on people riding bikes. However, with 91 people killed, 4,056 seriously injured, and 11,546 slightly injured cycling on the roads in 2022 the drivers that he wants to end the war on clearly have a very big head start, as well as powerful killing machines to help them. You won’t be surprised to learn that we couldn’t find any examples of drivers having been killed by dangerous cyclists, despite all the complaints that you will have heard.

Part of this has been a review of the safety of bus stop bypasses, perhaps because there have been a few stories about people being a bit scared by a passing rider when they were getting on or off a bus, and there have even been some injuries. The review was performed by Transport for London, and they found 164 bus stop bypasses on their own network of roads and cycleways, although they noted that there could be more.

They identified casualties that occurred within 50 metres of the bus stop bypass over the three years between 2020 and 2022, and then those that occurred on the bypasses themselves. From all this information they found 4 cases of pedestrians that had been injured by people riding bikes, that’s just over one per year on average. None of the incidents appeared to have occurred on the pedestrian crossings where people cycling are expected to give way to pedestrians.

Importantly the report noted that the chances of being injured at a bus stop bypass are very low compared to the chance of being injured by a driver on the wider network. Over the same time period There were more than 11,400 pedestrian casualties and more than 15,000 cyclist casualties resulting from collisions with motor vehicles in London.

Interestingly, despite a very good safety record only about a third of the bus stop bypasses were fully compliant with current best practice guidance. By comparison we don’t think that you will find a single inch of a cycle route that is associated with the road network in or around Lancaster that meets the current guidance, but please let us know if you think that you have found one.

Recent Cycling Levels in Lancaster

The recent review of the Bay Gateway by the County Council included information on the levels of cycling in Lancaster that were of significant interest to Cycling UK. This information would also have been expected to be of interest to anybody with an interest in the availability and accessibility of cycling as a cheap and sustainable mode of transport for local people.

The most notable monitoring point is at Millennium Bridge, where there were over 1600 recorded trips per day in 2013. Following the opening of Lancaster’s Northern Relief Road the number of daily cycle trips recorded had fallen by about 20% to about 1300. This might reasonably be expected given that driving in the area had been made much easier, but nothing had been done to improve conditions for cycling. The 20% reduction might well be people choosing to drive for relatively short local journeys that could be cycled.

Walking and Cycling Levels in Lancaster

Rather more alarmingly, in the 5 years since 2018 there has been a further 60% reduction in the number of cycle trips recorded on Millennium Bridge to 535 trips per day. This level of cycling is only one third of the levels seen in 2013, and should be a significant cause for concern for anybody wishing to promote sustainable transport.

Millennium Bridge had, and still has, the majority of trips recorded to the locations included in the monitoring, but declines were observed at all locations between 2018 and 2023. This certainly rises serious questions about who has been representing active travel to the council in recent years.

The Legend of the CYCLOPS

We recently had the opportunity to ride through one of the new CYCLOPS junctions. These are a relatively new thing in the UK and are intended to make conditions for walking and cycling much better, but without compromising the junction for drivers.

CYCLOPS stands for ‘Cycle Optimised Protected Signals’ , and they separate people walking, cycling and wheeling from vehicles, reducing the risk of conflict between users.

The cycle route goes around the outside of the junction for cars, but the timings for the lights enable you to make a right turn in a single movement, as you would if you were driving, although you might have a wait for the duration of the car phases.

It is probably a bit slower to negotiate than using the road, but it is a pleasant and relaxing experience regardless of how busy the road is.

Overall these kinds of junctions are a really positive step for active travel in the UK, and we hope that there will be many more such improvements in the region in the coming years.

Bay Gateway - 5 Year Review

Cycling UK recently had the opportunity to comment on the five year review of the Lancaster Northern Relief Road. We are extremely grateful to the County Councillor with responsibility for Highways and Transport for ensuring that our contribution was possible.

Summary of Cycling UK Comments

Lancaster has experienced a considerable reduction in levels of cycling over the past decade, and whilst some of this decline may be due to the construction of the Lancaster Northern Relief Road it is unlikely that this is the only factor. Cycling UK believes that gradual changes to the road network in and around Lancaster city centre have also progressively made Lancaster more dangerous, and therefore considerably more undesirable, for cycling. This has resulted in considerably lower levels of cycling in Lancaster compared to a decade ago. There are also several issues identified in the Lancaster Northern Relief Road that the council should aim to avoid in future projects. Several recommendations are made for the future to avoid similar problems from being repeated.

Cycling UK recommends that Lancashire County Council adopts a road danger reduction approach rather than the conventional “road safety” based approach, which seeks to achieve safer roads for all users by reducing the sources of danger on the roads.

Cycling UK recommends that where an entirely new junction is built, or an existing junction completely remodelled, key routes for walking and cycling are laid as tunnels under the junction prior to its construction, rather than providing multiple stage crossings at the same level as the motorised traffic.

Cycling UK recommends that where practical cycleways along roads with high traffic speeds (> 60 km/h) should be located with some space between them and the traffic lanes to improve the user experience.

Cycling UK recommends that any staff involved in the design of major active travel projects should be required to ride existing routes so that they can identify problem areas and avoid similar ones in future projects.

Cycling UK recommends that future Park and Ride schemes are fully integrated into the local transport system, with appropriate facilities for a variety of modes of transport into the city centre.

Presentation by Lancashire County Council

Comments from Cycling UK

Motonormativity: A blind spot we all share

Just over a year ago some UK based psychology researchers published a study about how the standards that we apply to cars and driving is at odds with those that we apply in other areas of life. They called this motonormativity.

Motornomativity: How Social Norms Hide a Major Public Health Hazard

One of the authors recently gave a presentation on this subject at a conference and this is available on-line. It is interesting and certainly gives plenty of food for thought.

You can watch the presentation below.

Lancaster Cycling Demonstration Town

The Cycling Demonstration Towns programme saw levels of funding for cycling approaching levels that are more typical of The Netherlands over a period of 6 years between 2005 and 2011. Lancaster and Morecambe was one of the locations, and averaged a spend of £13 per person during this period.

Of the six towns that took part in this project there was quite a bit of variation in terms of how much cycling levesl increased over the period compared to a baseline from 2005, i.e. at the start of the programme. It was noted that the individual delivery programmes, political support, funding changes, influence from other interventions and weather influences may have each contributed.

The Cycling Demonstration Towns project involved a lot of monitoring of cycling levels, and during the programme Lancaster had more than three times as many permanent cycle counters as there are in Utrecht! Virtually all of the cycle counters in and around Lancaster were abandoned relatively soon after the end of the programme though, amking it much more difficult for people to know how levels of cycling in Lancaster have been changing since then.

the cycling levels in each of the towns was compared against a matched town that was not part of the programme to understand how useful the additional funding had been in promoting cycling in the area. The figure below shows how increases in the levels of cycling in Lancaster compared to the matched area.

A greater growth was recorded in the corresponding matched area than in Lancaster with Morecambe. Whilst there was no significant investment in cycling in this matched area, political leadership strongly supportive of cycling is reported in this location during the corresponding period. There was some relatively small scale delivery of schemes to enable cycling, such as the installation of cycle contraflows, and a considerable effort to restrict car movement and to increase permeability of the town centre for cyclists.

Government road traffic estimates over a similar period of time indicated a increase in cycle traffic of approximately 18% between 2002 and 2012, which is broadly similar to the degree of change seen in Lancaster during the Cycling Demonstration Towns programme.

You can find the Sustrans reports on the outcomes of the Cycling Demonstration Towns progamme here.

Levels of Cycling in the UK

The National Travel Survey provides information on the levels of walking and cycling nationally.

The data suggest that on average there are between about 15 and 20 trips per person per year, and that this figure has been quite consistent for about 20 years.

Average number of cycling trips per person per year

However, we know that about 85% of people aged 16 and over in England do little or no cycling in a year.

This means that there are a small number of people making quite a lot of trips each.

This means that on average the few people who do actually cycle are probably making about two trips per week each by bike.

We will be looking to see if there is any more specific data for the Lancaster area in future posts.

Lancaster's Air Quality Management Area turns Twenty!

There has been a big birthday celebration this week, with the 20th anniversary of the Lancaster city centre Air Quality Management Area last Tuesday. Basically the entire one-way system is likely to exceed the 1 hour and annual mean objectives for nitrogen dioxide.

However, there may be some positive news in that we have heard rumors that Lancashire County Council will be receiving almost half a billion pounds of additional funding from next year onward to transform transport across the County. That’s equivalent to almost a week and a half’s worth of that mythical money that we used to pay to Europe and somebody said we could give the NHS instead if we left. The question is whether any of this will be used to address the air pollution problem in Lancaster.

The Northern Bypass was supposed to solve the already longstanding air pollution problem, but instead it has been used as a relief road so that more through traffic can use the city centre as a though route. Rishi Sunak certainly doesn’t need to be worrying about any of that nasty Lefty “War on Drivers” here.